It’s a busy week over here, so blogging has been light. Here are some things we’d probably have written about if we’d had more time:

Lester Johnson, the private investigator whose work helped clear David Lozano of attempted capitol murder charges after a shootout with APD, was honored at the Texas Association of Licensed Investigators convention this week. Interestingly, in the Statesman article’s comments section, Johnson continues to call out APD and the officer who filed an – ahem – unreliable report.

If you’re not totally clear on the backstory on Sharon Keller and her trial, there’s a good primer on it at the StandDown Texas Project. The veeeeery brief version is that Keller, the chief justice of Texas’ highest criminal court, is on trial for judicial misconduct after responding to an attorney whose computer problems were causing him to run a few minutes late while filing an appeal to stay an execution with the words, “We close at five.” He arrived at 5:20, the court refused to accept is filing, and his mentally-handicapped client was executed at 8:23 that evening.

Grits For Breakfast has another good post up – it’s like this is a trend or something – this time on the subject of DWI prevention via public transit and zoning for neighborhood bars. Expect some expanded commentary on this topic in this space coming soon.

The Statesman has an article about thousands of parolees who’ve been classified as sex offenders despite having never been convicted of a sex crime.

Gamso: For The Defense, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite legal blogs, has a smart primer on exactly what different types of pleas mean. It’s a really useful post for non-attorneys like myself, especially, who couldn’t understand that someone who pleads “not guilty” even though they know they did it wasn’t lying.

Houston defense attorney Paul Kennedy has better news for people who were outraged reading about Sharon Keller (which maybe should be everybody) – the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decided to allow an appeal that was filed a day late. The attorney in question blamed the problem on the county’s broken fax machine. Curiously, it appears their fax machine is usually broken when this court-appointed attorney – who takes on 355 felony appointments a year – tries to file appeals, and it usually fixes itself the next day.

Labels: abuse of power, APD, crime prevention, dwi, grits for breakfast, pleas, sex offender registration

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